OpenAI’s Sam Altman backtracks on AI job-loss fears, says top AI adopters are hiring more workers

Sam Altman, chief executive officer (CEO) of artificial intelligence (AI) startup OpenAI, has reportedly walked back his earlier prediction that AI is causing widespread job losses.

Speaking with CNBC on Monday, Altman argued that companies embracing AI are often the same ones hiring more workers, whereas firms that continue to blame AI for layoffs may not be using the technology extensively.

He said, “The companies that I know that have adopted AI the most are also the ones hiring the most,” and added, “And the companies, as a general rule, that are talking about doing layoffs because of AI are the ones adopting AI the least.”

He made these remarks before celebrating the official groundbreaking of a massive, one-gigawatt data centre 50 miles southwest of Detroit.

Altman added that AI can be a “convenient way” for companies to explain layoffs.

Altman backtracks on AI-driven job cuts

The OpenAI CEO has backtracked on his previous statements in which he said that entire job categories could be wiped out by artificial intelligence. Back in 2025, he told Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman that “some areas” in the job market would be “just like totally, totally gone” as they are replaced by AI agents. In the same year, he also suggested that the types of jobs being slashed or transformed by AI may not be considered “real work” in the long run.

Altman turns optimistic

He further said that he remains unsure how the new technology will ultimately affect employment, but added that his view has become more optimistic after watching companies adopt OpenAI’s coding tools, including Codex.

“I think I underestimated how jagged these models are going to be,” he said. “They do some things incredibly well, but they don’t do kind of the long-term, complex task supervision well at all.”

Anxiety over AI replacing jobs skyrockets

According to a Business Insider report, Altman’s remarks come at a time when employees are increasingly worried about what generative AI will mean for white-collar jobs. Some of the tech industry’s own leaders, including Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, have previously warned that artificial intelligence could replace many employees.

Previously, several tech companies also cited AI as the primary reason while announcing job cuts, including Block, Cisco, Coinbase, Snap, and Salesforce, and that anxiety is now showing up in public opinion. Citing a March Pew Research Centre poll, the report noted that at least 50 per cent of Americans were more concerned than excited about AI’s increased use in daily life. In comparison, only 10 per cent were more excited than concerned.

Sam Altman addresses public anxiety over job loss

Addressing increasing anxiety over job loss, Altman said he regrets some of OpenAI’s past press releases that might have contributed to the anxiety. Pointing to a December 2025 press release for GPT-5.2, in which the company said the model “outperforms professionals across 44 occupations,” he said he wished the company had been more precise.

He argued that human interaction will remain central to how businesses and society function. “People really like other people and want to interact with other people. They want to collaborate. They work with other people,” he said, and added, “When they buy a product, they want to talk to a person at the company.”

He went on to say, “Most people, I think, don’t want to watch an AI-generated creator. They want to know who the person behind it is. So I think we have under—and this is really good. I’m really happy about this. But I think our industry underestimated how much we’re going to be able to keep people at the centre of everything in an economy and a world that are based on people.”